1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to cable jointing or termination, particularly but not exclusively in submarine coaxial cable arrangements.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the prior art there have been various approaches to the problem of terminating a submarine cable for interface with another cable, or more commonly, with a submerged housing, such as contains repeater equipment, for example. The problem of providing watertight termination devices at the very great fluid pressures encountered on an ocean floor, further in view of the long term corrosive nature of sea water, has been addressed since the earliest days of transoceanic telephone and telegraph cables. More recently, coaxial telecommunications cables have been installed transocean, these raising many of the same mechanical and environmental problems and also some new problems, such as signal leakage due to imperfect shielding at cable interfaces.
Some known prior art in the area of interest includes U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,673,314; 2,155,650; and 2,697,739. Those patents deal with cable termination generally. Copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 927,667, filed July 24, 1978, entitled "Mechanical Submarine Cable Termination," discloses certain submarine cable termination apparatus of interest, but is adapted particularly for optical fiber cabling and, therefore, does not require shielding or integrity of coaxial cable outer conductor continuity.
The manner in which the invention deals with the prior art problems to produce a structure which allows much less electrical signal leakage and facilitates improved coaxial cable outer-conductor integrity will be understood from the description hereinafter.